In Sight
by stereonightss
Summary: Hiei and Kurama spar for practice


There were things the jaganshi saw with his body: insight more than sight, a proprioceptive knowing, a visceral awareness that surpassed in speed the sight of his own third eye. It's what made him a superlative fighter in his youth, before the implant. It served him still, in combat or otherwise.

This business was otherwise.

The smell alone was enough. Peat moss and the blood metal edge in the back of the throat. Mimosa and jasmine, white musk, rose on rose. The powdery human scent underneath, exotic, heady, a razor's edge from unpleasant. Different. Different enough he had to inhale again just to check it. Different, but the hit was good.

His youkai senses never dulled, never relegated any imprint to the background like a human, so that he was aware of the ways in which it mingled with his own scent, smoke and cinder, acrid exertion, briny minerality in a consonant chord with ozone and singed pine. Forest fire, a lightning crack through the canopy of a rainforest. A good mix.

He was aware of the ways in which his skin, hardened by battle but smooth like a river stone, polished and firm, brushed the peculiar groundskeepers callous. The hands were refined in form but rough like bark in places from the constant care and caress of plant, of earth, of spade and shear. Yielding softness belying the strength, tough under tender, like the unbreakable bend of bamboo.

But he wanted the yielding. Wanted to strip each branch to the pale wick beneath. It was all he could do to glimpse the wrist in a whip crack, the curve of the neck in a practiced dodge, so easy as to not even call for grace.

As though anything Kurama ever did wasn't cut through with that deadly grace, the product of a ruthless, all-seeing calm.

That calm over the human chaos was a fine accelerant to the fire in Hiei's belly. The incomprehensible bending to that frail human sensibility underlined the sense that the youko knew things that Hiei would never in a thousand years understand. Things that took nine hundred or more years to know in the first place.

The preference for human foods the body didn't need—Hiei knew he could sip nectar on the half moons and be sated—it pointed to a hedonism, an indulgence of the senses. What had the human craving for pleasure done to the ancient soul?

And yet, it brought them to a special place where Hiei in his scant ninety years could go measure-for-measure with the creature who before this human temperance would have snapped him in half had he ever tried to lift that silver tail. Hiei was an eyeblink in the life of the youko. But to Kurama he was friend and equal. And perhaps—

He shook the thought away, a motion so fast that it should have been invisible to the naked eye. And Hiei was _fast_. But Kurama saw. Speed was nothing to an opponent who grasped him so intimately that even Hiei's inner conflicts were predictable.

The fox-boy played with him sometimes, used the familiarity as an opportunity to experiment with style. Rose petals in a flying helix. Kinetic flower arranging, pushing each engorged bud through the soil just so, the deadly arrangement imbuing a sense of harmony, an aesthetic of grace into which one could submit life.

Today Kurama merely dodged. Parry, guard, empty fade to turn them. Direct them to a different clearing.

"This is a trap," he said, more to himself than to the fox. "Ch'."

"Maa, na." A smile. Not gloating—just pleased.

Hiei pinballed from tree to rock to tree. He had to survey the clearing, get a sense of what the fox could be planning. He lit silently on the thick high arm of a sycamore, hooked a thumb under the ward on his forehead, exposed the violet eye.

He felt the rough heel of the hand on his temple first. Then a hand around his waist, jerking him backward against something tall and firm. Then the feather-soft press of the fingers over the eye. The soft touch on the lid of the jagan shocked him to stillness.

"Seems I've got you."

Hiei's hands shot behind him to grip clear around Kurama's throat.

"Try something. I dare you."

Kurama laughed and it tickled Hiei's ear.

"What would you like me to try?"

Hiei could feel the words move in the throat, smooth through the hot press of his palms. Hotter still was the body pressed to his, the warmth a warning. A twitch in the small of his back set his alarm bells ringing—a creeping vine, some predatory plant?—he squirmed in Kurama's iron grip.

"Why, Hiei, I didn't realize you were so shy."

The hands loosened about his head, about his waist. He spun in an instant, hands around the throat again, pushing Kurama up against the trunk of the sycamore.

"Don't play with me."

Kurama's eyes were gem-bright and dancing with amusement. Hiei's blood ran dangerously near boiling.

"I wouldn't dare. You're barely legal."

The human turn of phrase was insult to the injury of the truth.

"You make me sick."

He spat the words in Kurama's face. Kurama leaned closer.

"Shall I make it better then?"

A hand on his trousers. He kept his own hands on the fox's throat.

"You're telling me you've got a seed that can cure this," he said, pressing into that warm hand.

"In a manner of speaking…"

Hiei loosened his grip but kept the fox pinned against the sycamore. He crushed their bodies together. The force of it made Kurama's head thump against the bark.

This was a new dance.

Kurama's fingers slipping between them to undo his belts. Kurama's knuckles sliding down the clefts at his hips, bone against hard muscle. The green eyes on him the whole time.

"I won't go any further unless you ask me to."

"Do it or I'll kill you."

A dark laugh, a hungry one. The green eyes creased with something soft. Hiei raged inside.

"Very well."

The slide of the rough heel of the hand over the head, the transition to the smooth well in the middle of the palm, back again, back again. Only a few times before Hiei was lurching, head buried against Kurama's chest, sucking in that scent. Forest fire. Lightning.

The drops of dew that slid off Kurama's hand sizzled as they hit the tree branch.

"Isn't that better now."

It pained him, but it was. Now he hurt all over in a new way.

The fox slipped the clean hand into Hiei's hair, cradling his head behind the ear.

"Will you let me go now? I dare say you'll leave a mark if you don't."

Hiei looked at him, memorizing the warmth in the green eyes, the spreading redness of the skin of the neck under his hands. He squeezed tightly, pulled Kurama forward. The lips were soft. He tasted citrus and river water.

An appreciative sound. Indulgent, the same sound as when he savored a piece of chocolate or the scent of a fresh bloom.

"Another round? I'll wait for you in the garden."

Hiei grunted. He let the neck go. Cinched the buckles again.

"A three count to the start once you enter."

He disappeared.

Kurama licked his hand clean and lept to the ground. He started off toward the garden.


End file.
